


romulus

by aeridi0nis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Blood, Blood and Injury, Gen, Hurt Remus Lupin, Marauders, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Pre-Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Remus Lupin Needs a Hug, Remus Lupin Whump, Werewolves, Young Remus Lupin, content warning, i think its angst?, is there comfort? idk, not a cheerfest!, warning u now!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:28:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29534064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeridi0nis/pseuds/aeridi0nis
Summary: “Can you see the moon, Remus?” His son nods, and Lyall smiles. “Good lad. That’s why the moon’s there, to make sure you aren’t in the dark, even if it feels like it. It’s there to make sure you’re alright.”“It’s for me?” He asks, and there’s a beginning of a smile, so Lyall decides to just run with it.“Yes, the moon’s for you, Remus, when you need it."***Lyall Lupin likes revenge. He likes it a lot, until a window breaks just before his son's fifth birthday. He likes it a lot. Until he doesn't.
Relationships: Hope Lupin & Lyall Lupin & Remus Lupin, Hope Lupin & Remus Lupin, Hope Lupin/Lyall Lupin, Lyall Lupin & Remus Lupin
Comments: 7
Kudos: 19





	romulus

**Author's Note:**

> yeah! its'...this! my turn to flog this dead horse! i always knew i wanted to take a crack at writing it at SOME point, so..here it is! as far as i'm aware this is completely canon compliant, so in case u aren't totally familiar with the backstory: greyback is brought in for questioning. Lyall accuses him of being a werewolf, describing them as 'evil' 'soulless' things, but no one believes him. Greyback escapes, he has a mind for revenge, blah blah blah we know the rest. I never write with a plan so sorry if it feels like it goes on a little before we get to THE night, hopefully it pays off? stick with me, y'all. This telling is pretty thorough so just to reiterate, MAJOR CW FOR BLOOD!! other than that, enjoy, and if u did, leave a comment/kudos to let me know :) thank u!

_February 5 th, 1965._

Lyall Lupin likes revenge.

That is, he has an appreciation for it. The passive sort, specifically, the sort that isn’t his doing. So perhaps _revenge_ isn’t the right word for it. What Lyall really appreciates, to be honest, are the _I told you so’s._ He’s always found it more satisfying to sit back and let other people’s stupidity serve his revenge for him, and it does. Frequently. As it turns out, people are generally very stupid. Thing is, most people like to pretend _I told you so_ is a game for children, like such things are beneath them. Like they don’t secretly enjoy those petty little victories. They’re lying, though. This, Lyall knows.

He also knows, more or less, that with the next full moon a day away, he’s probably about to enjoy the mother of all _told you so’s._ To an extent, he already has.

He tries explaining it to Hope when he gets home – which is later than he should, because after the questioning Atkins had just _happened_ to come across two extra stacks of reported boggart incidents for Lyall to sift through, half an hour before he should’ve clocked out. _Didn’t see these before, mate,_ he’d smirked, dumping the paperwork on Lyall’s desk. He’d knocked over the only framed picture Lyall has; Hope, holding Remus on his first birthday, while he giggles and waves his new stuffed bear in front of the camera.

 _Romulus was the wrong name for this bear, you know,_ Lyall had said, the night of that birthday. Remus had been asleep in his lap, bear tucked against his chest and his tiny arm curled around it’s neck.

Hope had frowned at him from where she sat in the armchair opposite. The name had been her idea, earlier when her mum had presented Remus with the toy, and she’d seemed rather pleased with it.

 _Why? What’d you mean? They go together, don’t they?_ She’s protested. _They’re brothers, Remus and Romulus, it’s all that Roman stuff. It’s perfect. He likes it well enough, too, even if he can’t say it yet._

 _Romulus kills Remus,_ he’d replied. His leg had fallen asleep, but he didn’t dare adjust Remus in his arms. _In the legend, I mean._ Hope had smiled and rolled her eyes.

 _Mm, oh, well in that case,_ and here she’d nodded slowly, adopting an air of mock solemnity. _I suggest we all sleep with one eye open, eh? Because,_ she’d said as she’d risen, crossing over to where he and Remus were sat to press a kiss into her son’s hair and gesturing to the bear clutched tightly against his stomach, _from the looks of it, I’d say we’ve been rather easily infiltrated._

Anyway. Atkins knocked it over, and Lyall only just caught it before it plummeted to the floor, and Atkins had laughed, like he’d told a joke. _Ah, sorry there,_ delivered in a way that suggested he was not in the least bit sorry. _But these,_ he said, slapping a hand to the stacks of paperwork. _Well, I reckon they require your..expertise, I simply don’t know where to start with some of them. You’ll go over them before you leave mate, won’t you? Cheers._ And Atkins had clapped Lyall on the back and strode off before he could protest, tugging on the sleeves of his stupid little pinstripe suit and looking like an affected little humbug sweet on legs.

 _Mate,_ he’d kept saying. Smarmy tosser. There had been at least twenty reports detailing claims of boggarts assuming the shape of zombies. Atkins had been right about one thing, though: Lyall _is_ the expert. So he checked the locations, and he wasn’t surprised: the majority, as he’d expected, had been outside of pubs, bars, clubs. Always night-time. It’s things like this that make Lyall confident in his assertion that generally, people are idiots, because it became quite clear quite soon that he was missing his son’s bedtime because no one could tell the difference between a zombie and some git who’s stumbling home bladdered.

It’s perpetually frustrating, not being listened to.

Hope listens though. She’s great that way. She’s listening to him now, blue mug held between her hands as he relates the events of the questioning to her over their kitchen table at half past ten at night. She doesn’t quite seem to see the triumph in it that he does, but she nods along dutifully all the same. He explains how they’d brought the thing in, interrogated it about the dead children. How easily everyone else had fallen for the oblivious tramp act, but how he’d _known._ And then, when he’d suggested they detain it – just until the full moon, just for a day – how they’d laughed at him. Kicked him out.

He goes into more detail for the next part. When he explains how it’d jumped Jenkins when he tried to obliviate it. He doesn’t have all the details – he wasn’t there, after all – but he embellishes. It’s more for him than her, really; he enjoys telling this part, because it’s the part where he’s proved right. His grand _I told you so._

“But..if he escaped, love,” she says finally, when he’s finished relaying his day. “How d’you know you were right? About him…about him being a.. _y’know.”_ Hope hushes her voice, as though she’s about to discuss something forbidden, something dirty. “A _werewolf.”_

It’s difficult to explain. Especially to Hope, who’s a muggle, after all. Lyall doesn’t indulge any of that wizard superiority shite, but, well, this _isn’t_ her world. Not really. She hadn’t even known that werewolves existed until a few months back, when he’d first been appointed to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creature. Shit. Because what a _wonderful_ job they’d done of regulating and controlling them today.

“I can’t…I just _knew,”_ Lyall insists, gesticulating frustratedly with his free hand while his other holds his own tea, as though in the hope that it’ll convey something his words can’t. The frustration jolts him back to hours earlier, when he’d been trying to make the same point to his colleagues. How do you explain instinct without making it sound like assumption?

“It was obvious, you know? There are signs, if you know where to look. They aren’t like you and me, Hope. Up here,” he explains, tapping a finger to his temple. “It’s just animal, all the time, and you can see it their eyes. The eyes…they disguise themselves as human, but the eyes don’t change. They stay animal. Feral. There’s no soul behind those eyes, Hope—”

“Animals have souls, though, don’t they?” Hope asks, frowning. Lyall sighs.

“Well…well yes, I mean, I suppose they do. But werewolves are different, you see. They aren’t..they’re not _just_ animal, they don’t just do the things they do out of animal instinct. It’s not out of a need to survive. It’s _deliberate,_ they’re evil. And that was one of them, I’m quite certain of it. Knew it as soon as I looked at it, but no one listens to me, Hope. I told them what it was, told them it wasn’t harmless. If they’d just kept it a _day,_ they would’ve seen. But nobody listens. And then Harlan piped up, course he did, all _stick to Welsh boggarts, Lyall._ Fucking wanker—”

 _“Lyall!”_ Hope scolds, eyebrows raised. He freezes for a moment, because he’s not immediately sure what she’s taken issue with. When he realizes that it’s his language, he rolls his eyes.

“He’s not even in the room! He’s asleep! I’m not even allowed to swear when he’s asleep now?”

“That’s not the point! It’s a bad habit! Your language really is awful, love, _Christ._ It’ll slip out when he’s around one day, if you’re not careful.”

Lyall stares down at the table, pretending to sulk, and mutters a retort about taking the Lord’s name in vain. Hope grins, and Lyall can’t help but look up again at that. Her smile is too pretty.

“Oi, I won’t be lectured on the Bible by a man who practices witchcraft, alright? Point is, he thinks the world of you, and he copies everything you do, and he’ll pick up on it if you carry on like that around him. You know he wanted to go to work with you today? Burst into tears when I told him you’d already left.”

Lyall can imagine it, and that makes him smile, too: Remus bouncing up to Hope, folding his arms over his chest and fixing her with one of his very-ultra-serious-grown-up looks (which are rather _too_ good, for a four-year-old, to be honest) and insisting he go to work with Lyall. He definitely wouldn’t take any of Atkins’ crap if Remus were there, of that he is sure. But perhaps the Dark Creatures office isn’t the best place for a small child anyway.

“I might point out that he would hear _and_ see worse things than his father saying _wanker_ if he came to work with me, you know,” Lyall says, following it up with a swig of his tea. He grimaces; he didn’t realize he’d let it go so cold.

Worse things, Lyall thinks. Remus would definitely see worse things. His father being laughed at, for one. Being sent out of inquiries and then burdened with the work no one else gives a shit about. Why the fuck did they ask him to join this committee if they don’t want to hear what he has to say? He feels a little angry again, the feeling approaching suddenly, a forked tongue. Fortunately, it retreats with equal haste. He reminds himself that none of it matters, because he’d been right. Not so funny now, is it?

He’s keen to return to his original point. “And even if I ended up being wrong about it being a—y’know, I was at least right about it being _dangerous._ And Jenkins is a good bloke, and now he’s in St. Mungo’s. Three of them against one it was, it had friends waiting outside. Muggle dosser my arse,” he laughs bitterly.

Hope is no longer smiling. Instead, there are lines of concern etched between her brows. “Are people looking for him?”

 _“It,”_ Lyall corrects. “It’s an it, Hope, they aren’t _people._ We’ve got people out looking for it, but I doubt they’ll turn up much before the full moon tomorrow. Dirty, dirty things like are, Hope. Going after _children._ You can’t tell me that wasn’t intentional. What sort of monster d’you have to be?”

Hope tips her head to the side, as though she’s considering his stance. “All of them can’t be like that, though. What about the normal ones? I assume – well, they’re only actually wolves at the full moon, eh? So there must be some who just..just live normally for the rest of the month, right? I mean there must be. You could meet one, and just never know.”

“No such thing as a normal werewolf, Hope,” Lyall scoffs. “Nothing _normal_ about them. They’re all the same, they’re all monsters – look, I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with more dead children after tomorrow – In fact, I’m sure of it. Merlin knows it won’t be on my head if we do, should’ve just put the thing down when we had the chance – no, I’m serious Hope, don’t look at me like that. You can’t feel sorry for them, there’s nothing to feel sorry _for,_ they’re just vermin. They deserve to be treated the way they treated those muggle children, in fact they deserve _worse._ And that’s what I said today, but of course no one listened. Well, maybe they’ll listen to me now, eh?”

Lyall knows Hope doesn’t like it when he talks like this. She’s giving him _that_ look: all wide eyes, lips pursed in judgement, as though he’s startled to hear it coming from her husband. Perhaps she is; Lyall isn’t a violent man, generally. He just has a temper. And seeing the pictures, what they’d done to those muggle children…well that was enough to provoke it. That little girl had been three years old, and there was practically nothing left of her. Lyall is not the monster here.

He sighs. He’s tired, after all. Today has been longer than it should’ve been. “You disagree?” He says, both asking and stating.

“You said that?” She replies.

“Said what?”

“All that stuff you just told me. About how they’re monsters and they’re evil and they need to be put down, all of that. Did you say it today? In front of the werewolf?”

“I didn’t say anything that everyone else doesn’t think,” he shoots back, bristling. He’s starting to feel a little defensive. “Do you disagree, then?” he repeats.

“I wouldn’t know,” she replies blankly. “I just think it must be a rather difficult life for them, if you all think as you do, and say those things. Especially if he really was a werewolf.”

By _you all,_ Lyall recognizes, she means _wizards._ It’s strange, acknowledging the line between them. It’s even stranger for Hope to be the one drawing it. He stares at her, silent.

“I also know,” she says, standing from the table with a sigh of her own, “that I’m tired, and I’m going to bed. You coming, love?”

“Er, yeah. Yes.” He rises too, and she takes his mug from him, tipping the contents of both into the sink.

“And Lyall?” She adds, as they leave. “No werewolf talk in front of Remus. He’s been a little..uneasy, recently, have you noticed? When I’m putting him to bed. He’s started asking me to check for monsters, promise him he’s safe. I’m glad he’s reading, but I think it makes his imagination a little over-active. If he starts hearing about the sort of things you deal with at work, none of us are going to get any sleep at all.”

Lyall agrees, figuring that it would do very little good to say that actually, he thinks there are a lot more irrational things to be afraid of than werewolves.

***

_February 7 th, 1965._

The full moon is the following night. As Lyall suspected, there’s another attack. It leaves a six year-old-boy dead.

 _Better dead than turned, lad,_ his colleague Cattermole remarks, when they read the report in the office that morning. Lyall can’t help but agree, to be honest, as he stares down at the picture of the little boy. His mind, unprompted, turns dark hair light, adds freckles, turns it into Remus. He swallows, and find his throat feels unusually tight. He isn’t so glad to have been right, anymore.

 _If they’d only let me get my hands on that department,_ the old man continues, lighting a cigarette with the tip of his wand. _I’d turn it around, I would. Why, I’d have them all wiped out in a year. There’d be no more dead children, lad, I’ll tell you that for free. We aren’t doing enough, not at all._

Lyall hums in agreement, but he isn’t really listening, eyes still fixed on the report. He notices something else, about the attack. The location. There’s never been one in Wales before, not to his memory.

It isn’t so far from them.

***

_March 6 th, 1965._

Romulus the bear is looking a little worse for wear, nowadays.

Remus is rather quiet, mild-mannered sort of boy, and he treats his toys accordingly. But now, even though Romulus has retired to just presiding over Remus’ bed during the day, he’s missing an eye, and the black fur at his neck has worn thin from years of Remus clutching him there. Remus has had him now for longer than he hasn’t, but Lyall still isn’t sure how three (alright, nearly four) years of reading the toy stories and pretending to feed it biscuits could result in it being in the state it’s in now.

“You never had a teddy when you were little, did you, eh?” Hope asks, grinning, when one evening he suggests they buy Remus a new one for his upcoming fifth birthday.

“Not really,” Lyall admits, dragging a hand down his face. “My brother _did_ hide a garden gnome in my bed once while I was asleep, though. I assume it’s not quite the same. Romulus doesn’t seem to have quite so many teeth, for one.”

Hope giggles. She’s sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, wrapping presents for Remus’ birthday, four days from now. She’s wrapping story books at the moment, half of them in Welsh. Remus likes his stories, to be fair. Hope will say he gets the reading thing from her, with all her muggle classics given pride of place on their bookshelf, and Lyall will insist that he takes after him, seeing as said muggle classics are surrounded by dusty tomes sporting title such as _‘Binding Boggarts: The theory behind the Riddikulus Charm’._ They’re a rather bookish family.

Secretly, selfishly, Lyall is hoping that all of Remus’ reading points towards him being sorted into Ravenclaw when he starts at Hogwarts, just as he was. Hope, if she could hear his thoughts, would disagree with placing such expectations on a four-year-old and argue that he’ll do well however he’s sorted, _when_ he’s sorted. She would be right, of course. But…still. It’d be nice.

“I can tell,” Hope says. “You don’t really _replace_ a kid’s toys, not unless you really have to because they’re lost or ruined beyond repair or something. They get very attached. He already is, though he doesn’t seem quite as bad as I was – I didn’t even like _washing_ mine, when I was a girl. I didn’t like that he’d come out smelling all different. And Remus has had him…oh, what would it be now? It was his first birthday, wasn’t it? Almost four years. Christ,” she breathes, looking up at him, all bright-eyes and smiling. “He’s going to be five, Lyall. How is he almost five?”

Lyall feels it too: time has been stealthy. It’s such a parent-y thing to say, the type of thing he’d hear from his grandmother as a boy while she pinched his cheeks. _Oh, how are you almost five, six, seven, young man!_ But now, with one of his own, he knows it to be true. It really could have been yesterday that Remus was just a baby, and now he’s practically five. He’s halfway to ten, and then he’s at Hogwarts, and then he’s a _teenager,_ and then he’s an adult, and maybe there’ll be kids of his own _._ It’s dizzying, having a child. It’s like swimming with the current. You feel like you’re in control, but the water was always pushing in that direction anyway. You’ve just complied.

“Would you want another one, d’you think?” He finds himself saying, before he’s even thought about it.

Hope tips her head to the side, amused. “I think I’m a bit too old for teddy bears now, love.”

“Another baby.”

Does _he_ even want another one?

“I…oh, Lyall..” Hope begins, twisting her hands in her lap, and _fuck,_ should he have said that? Is that a no? He fumbles for a recovery, for a way to dismiss it—

“Yes,” she says finally, before he’s found words. “Yes, yes, I think I would,” she continues, and she’s beaming now. That smile of hers, that always makes Lyall feel stupidly lucky.

He thinks he would too.

“I just…I just thought, y’know, if they’re anything like him,” Lyall jerks his head up towards the ceiling, where Remus is upstairs drawing, last they checked. He grins. “How much harder could two really be?”

***

Hope puts Remus to bed, once she’s finished wrapping the presents. They usually take it in turns. But something, probably the talk of a second baby, has Lyall feeling uncharacteristically soppy tonight. He only means to poke his head into Remus’ room for a moment, but he’s surprised to find his son sitting upright in the dark, a small silhouette against the pale light of the rising moon.

“Remus?”

“Da?” Comes the reply, high-pitched and whispered. He sounds relieved.

Lyall moves to perch on the end of Remus’ bed, and Remus stares up at him, eyes wide, Romulus tucked against his side (looking, if you ask Lyall, rather sorry for himself, what with the one eye and all). “What’s wrong, Remus?”

“I don’t like being in the dark, Da,” he mumbles. Lyall frowns.

“You’ve never minded it before. What’s got you so scared, recently?”

Remus draws his knees up to his chest, shaking his head. “Don’t like it,” he repeats quietly. “Can you look underneath, Da?”

“Underneath…? Underneath the bed? You want me to check for monsters? Is that it?”

Remus nods seriously. “For monsters.”

This has become a frequent occurrence, over the last month or so. Neither Lyall nor Hope can put him to bed before they check underneath for monsters. It was cute, at first, but honestly it’s the sort of thing Lyall can’t help but think Remus should be growing out of. 

“C’mon, you’re not afraid of monsters, Remus, are you? You’re a big boy now, eh? You’re going to be..” Lyall holds up his hands, furrowing his brow, and he pretends to count on his fingers. He holds up a few. “You’re going to be...four years old on your birthday, Remus, am I right?”

Remus grins at his father’s mistake, shaking his head vigorously and pushing Lyall’s fingers away.

“No? You’re not going to be four?” Lyall asks, feigning confusion. Remus shakes his head again, giggling, and holds up a hand of his own.

 _“Five._ I’m four right now, Da,” Remus informs his father graciously, apparently now realizing it’s far more polite to at least _pretend_ you’re trying not to laugh, but failing miserably nonetheless.

“ _Five?_ Are you sure? I could’ve _sworn_ you were turning four..”

Remus shakes his head again, now seemingly concerned for his poor father’s inability to determine his age. _“Five,”_ he repeats exasperatedly. Lyall nods along, absorbing this new information.

“Five. Okay, alright, if you say so. Well, five-year-olds _definitely_ aren’t afraid of monsters, are they? Definitely not. Didn’t Ma already check, anyway?”

It’s a mistake. The talk of monsters seems to have reminded Remus of his earlier fears, and the corners of his mouth twitch back down, unconvinced. Lyall sighs, realizing that it’s going to take a little more work than that. So for tonight, he just decides to humour him. He ducks down to glance at the decidedly monster-free space beneath the bed.

Lyall looks back up, smiling (hopefully) reassuringly. “No monsters, Remus. Alright? I promise.”

Remus isn’t satisfied. “What about the wardrobe?”

“There’s nothing in there, Remus. C’mon, lie down, I promise you. Why are you so scared of monsters all of a sudden? What’ve you been reading?”

Remus stares at him with big eyes, but eventually complies, laying back down so Lyall can pull the duvet back up. “I don’t like being in the dark.”

“You aren’t in the dark, see?” Lyall assures him gently, pointing at the moon visible through the window above his bed, swathing the bedroom in silver. “Can you see the moon, Remus?” His son nods, and Lyall smiles. “Good lad. See, if you were in the dark, you wouldn’t be able to see the moon, and you wouldn’t be able to see me. That’s why the moon’s there, to make sure you aren’t in the dark, even if it feels like it. It’s there to make sure you’re alright.”

Remus turns to gaze at the moon, the fear in his face giving way to wonder. “It’s for me?” He asks, and there’s a beginning of a smile, so Lyall decides to just run with it.

“Yes, the moon’s for you, Remus, when you need it. Early birthday present,” he says softly. “ _Now,_ go to sleep, or it’ll be the only one you get, eh?”

He lets the threat hang in the air for a moment, with Remus looking adequately worried, before he grins and ruffles his hair. “ _Joking!_ I’m joking, I’m joking, plenty of presents. _But_ you still need to go to sleep. C’mon, g’night.”

“Goodnight, Da,” Remus mumbles, shifting onto his side so his bear rests beneath his chin. Lyall exits quietly, leaving the door open just an inch to allow the light from the landing to slip in.

“What was the matter?” Hope asks when he gets into bed, yawning.

“He’s decided he doesn’t like the dark anymore. _And_ he’s not suitably confident in your ability to check for monsters, apparently. _And_ there’s a chance he thinks his old man’s an idiot, now. Might be worth getting him a nightlight or something. I can cast a charmed flame, actually, if you’ve got an empty jar for me to use.”

“So how’d you get him to settle down without one?”

Lyall shrugs. “I gave him the next best thing.”

***

Lyall _registers_ the glass breaking. Perhaps it wakes him up, maybe he’s already awake, such details are unclear. Either way, there’s a sound, and though he’s not sure he really comprehends it, he’s definitely aware that it was made.

What he does comprehend, however, is the sound of his son screaming.

It’s the worst sound he’s ever heard.

 _“Lyall!”_ And this time it’s Hope, screaming, next to him, gripping his arm and pushing him up out of bed, though he’s already up, fumbling blindly at his bedside table until his hand closes around his wand and he knows he has it, even if he doesn’t look down to check.

He’s cold, shockingly so, but he’s also aware that he’s sweating, so he grips his wand tighter and he _sprints,_ sprints fast enough that he slams against the wall trying to turn a corner, which would hurt if he weren’t so numb. He sprints without remembering asking himself to do it, not that he’s about to stop, not that he could, and he’s vaguely glad that he left the door ajar a little when he throws it wide but he doesn’t really have time to feel anything, properly.

Not once the door is open.

He doesn’t know what he sees first – he really couldn’t say. He also never forgets.

It’s one of two things.

A werewolf, reared up in his son’s bedroom, on his _bed,_ all frenzied claws and paws and bulging yellow eyes and snarls and growls and spittle flying, a great, eight-foot hunk of fur stretched over long, bony limbs, a blot against the moonlight trailing broken glass.

Or:

His son, trapped in it’s jaws by his shoulder, limp and small like a ragdoll. Limp and small like a mangy black teddy bear with one eye missing and the fur worn off around it’s neck. He’s spluttering and screaming and crying all at once, shattered variations of _please_ and _Ma_ and _help_ and _Da_ as the wolf whips it’s head back and forth furiously, like it’s playing with a toy.

It is one of those two things.

Lyall’s family are (or _were_ – Lupins are few and far between nowadays, and both his parents have passed) pureblood. They’d never been one of the twenty-eight or anything so fancy as that, and they’d never really bought into the pureblood, half-blood, mudblood hierarchy stuff, but _technically,_ they were still pureblood, and certain traditions remained. When Lyall was twelve, his father, John, had thought him to duel. It was sort of a rite of passage, and Lyall, already becoming familiar with the frustration of not being listened to, had been all too eager to learn. _I don’t know what they’re teaching you at school these days, lad,_ his father had said, stern. _But I’ll be damned if my sons don’t know how to defend themselves._

So, like his two brothers before him, Lyall had learnt it all. Jinxes, hexes, curses that his mother disapproved of and his father deemed necessary and twelve-year-old Lyall had found terribly exciting to know. _You’re not to use these for fun, lad, you understand me?_ His father had said, twirling his own wand between his fingers. _These aren’t a joke. These are for protection only, alright?_ Some of them they covered in class, eventually, anyway. Some they did not.

Lyall does not stop to wonder whether his father would approve of his excuse to use them now.

So when the door first swings open he pauses, just for a moment, just long enough to take those two images in, separate and yet unbearably and horrifically linked, and then Hope is behind him and she sees it too and she _screams_ and he is pointing his wand at the _werewolf_ that is in their son’s _bedroom_ and he’s reeling off curse after curse after curse without stopping to breathe, they’re spilling off of his tongue like blood and his mouth tastes like copper.

Sparks fly, but it only agitates the wolf; it growls and sinks it’s teeth further into Remus’ flesh, pinning him down with a paw that makes him look _so tiny_ and he screams again, Hope is shrieking and sobbing behind him while Lyall hits the thing with different colours, red and gold and blue. He thinks, vaguely, that he hopes Remus can see the colours, hopes he sees them and maybe he thinks of fireworks or something nice, anything that isn’t terrifying as Lyall struggles to aim in a way that avoids hitting Remus. He has no idea how long he’s standing there, trying to force the thing back through a window that looks entirely too small to have let it through in the first place. Trying to force the thing to _let go of his son_.

 _“Expulso!”_ he shouts, and the wolf is slammed back against the exterior wall, taking Remus with it. It hits the broken window but it’s not enough, not enough to force it through, and now it’s _angry_ , teeth bared where they’re clamped around Remus.

 _Expulso,_ again. _Expulso Expulso Expulso Expulso Expulso._

_“Diffindo!”_

The spell rips through the wolf’s side neatly, seeping dark red mingling with grey, matting the fur, and the thing whimpers and then it howls, stumbling back.

It’s enough to make it drop Remus, who falls back onto his bed with a dull thud and does not move.

Lyall sees his chances and steps forward, _Expulso Expulso Expulso,_ until one strikes it in it’s jaw suddenly and the wolf spins with the force of it, hits the window frame, and falls straight through. It's not a far drop; the wolf smacks into something below with a heavy, metallic crunch, and that's when Lyall remembers Hope's Vauxhall Viva, parked beneath Remus' bedroom window.

Oh, they've made this so easy.

Hope pushes past Lyall immediately, shaking and crying and collapsing next to Remus’ bed while Lyall makes for the window, leaning out into the cool night air in search of the wolf on the ground below. It’s dark out, too dark to make things out properly, including the damage to Hope's car. There are no streetlights in the Welsh countryside. The moonlight is not enough at all.

Lyall catches bites of movement, though; shifting shadows, a hind leg making for the tree line, a flash of a yellow eye, a glint of a wet muzzle. He tries to kill it, and finds the spell comes because he has never meant anything more. Jagged green light rips through the night, towards the forest, and then it goes wide and fizzles out against the grass and the thing disappears into the cover of the trees.

There’s the rustling of branches and then everything goes quiet, and if he were to keep looking out the window at the night and the forest and the moon it’d be like nothing has happened at all.

He can’t stay there, though, between the house and the night, because something has happened and his wife’s voice drags him back inside.

 _“Lyall,”_ she sobs, the word fracturing in her throat, and he turns away from the night where nothing happened and is greeted with _red. Red,_ everywhere, red all over Remus and his pajama shirt and Hope’s hands; Hope, who is on the floor beside Remus’ bed cradling her son as though he’s an infant while red spills and soaks and seeps, gushing like it’s desperate, frightened, fleeing a wound that seems to run from the base of his neck across his chest, down to his elbow, more red than seems possible for a four-year-old to have in their body (though of course it isn’t in his body, anymore). As far as Lyall can tell Remus still isn’t moving, his eyes are closed and his eyelashes are dark against pale, grey, clammy skin.

He looks like he could be sleeping.

He looks like he’s dead.

Cattermole’s voice, in the office, as he fishes for a cigarette. February. _Better dead than turned, lad._

And Lyall finds that he does not move, either.

 _“Lyall,”_ Hope repeats. She goes to stroke Remus’ hair, but her hands are slick with blood and she falters when she see’s that she’s streaked his hair red, dissolving back into sobs and she rocks him back and forth, whispering something panicked. Begging. “Please _, please,_ please help me, _my boy, my boy, my baby, please help me, please Lyall,_ please do something.” She stares up him with red eyes. “There’s—there’s got to be a spell, you can do something, _please_ Lyall, please do something, please help, please, I can’t, I _can’t_ —”

But Lyall is busy staring at the biggest wound, the one where Hope is pressing her fingers, trying to stop the bleeding, though there are scratches and gashes elsewhere too. The biggest wound is the bite marks. From teeth. He’s been bitten. The werewolf bit him. There’s a _bite mark_ from a _werewolf_ on his _son._

_Better dead than turned._

Right?

“It’s too late,” Lyall says quietly, voice strained.

Remus’ eyelashes flutter a little and Hope makes a wet, urgent sound at the back of her throat, clutching him tighter. He’s shivering.

“What do you—it’s not, he’s breathing!” She cries, louder. “He’s still breathing! He’s still, he’s still, you can do something Lyall, we can take him, j-just please, please do—”

“It’s _too late,_ Hope. He’s already been..he’s going, he’s going to be a—”

 _“I KNOW!”_ She screams, so loudly that Lyall flinches, whipping her head upwards to glare at him furiously, desperately. She’s terrifying, right now. _“I know! I know! I know what he’s going to be!_ I don’t care, Lyall! I don’t care! He’s going to d- _die_ otherwise, I don’t care, I don’t care, I know you can do something, just _do something,_ help me stop the, there’s so much… _oh,”_ Remus shifts a little, makes some small, pained noise and Hope holds him up against her shoulder, bloody hand tangled in the curls at the back of his neck, shushing him gently. She looks up at Lyall again, and she when she talks it does not sound like Hope. It sounds low and broken and so, so angry.

_“Fix this.”_

Remus registers the shouting, it seems, because he’s stirring in his mother’s arms, breaths coming stuttered and faint. He turns his cheek, smudged with blood, against her shoulder, so that he’s facing Lyall, and his eyes flicker open and find his father’s. He blinks. His eyes are glassy. He looks confused. Lyall realizes that he's just standing there. Remus is watching him just stand there. 

Lyall stares back at him, at his eyes, large and brown like Hope’s. Like tobacco. They’re the only part of Hope he has, those eyes, because otherwise he’s the spit of Lyall. Remus’ eyes are scared and shiny and slightly red from crying, but they’re recognizable, obviously. Of course they are – they’re his son’s.

Oh.

They’re his son’s. Still.

That’s his son.

Still.

And Lyall finds that there isn’t much animal about him at all. In fact, he just looks like a little boy.

(For now).

But whether it’s for now or forever, something that Lyall can’t quite name clicks into place in his head, and _better dead than turned_ begins to sound less like a statement and more like a question.

Remus might die, and suddenly Lyall is certain that in no world could that possibly be better.

“Dittany,” he mumbles to himself, and Hope looks up at him again.

“What?”

“Dittany,” he repeats, urgently this time, heart thudding loudly in his chest again, like a metronome, keeping time for him. He crouches down to where Hope is sat and gently pries Remus away from her so he can see the bite, fingers ghosting over the marks. “ _Shit,_ and..and silver, dittany and silver. Fuck. Fuck, okay, alright. We need..I’ve got, I need to seal it. We have to seal the wound, we _cannot_ take him to a hospital, Hope, they’ll.. _fuck._ No one can know, you understand? I can do it, I can do it at home, I just need dittany and silver. I’ve got…downstairs, I need to…”

Remus looks at him again, breathing heavily.

 _“Really hurts, Da,”_ he whispers, a small, cracked secret. He starts to cry again, and Hope is whispering into his hair, telling him that he’s going to be fine, fine, fine. Lyall is just relieved that Remus is doing _something._ He finds that he would quite like to stay on the floor, with his son, and his wife, but he can’t. They don’t have time.

He swallows and straightens up, pauses for a moment to collect his thoughts, and then addresses Hope again. He goes for calmness and he fails.

“Stay here. I’ll be right, I _promise,_ I’ll be right back, I’m going to get what I need to seal the wound with. Just keep applying pressure, more, to..to the, to where it’s bleeding, it’s going to hurt him a little but you just need to keep applying pressure until – just..just stay here, stay here,” he pleads, as if she’s going anywhere, and he takes her free hand and squeezes it, ignoring the smear of drying, rust-coloured blood it leaves on him. Ignoring the fact that she doesn’t squeeze back, because fuck, why would she? “It’ll be alright, it’ll be alright, just stay here..”

Words feel like an inadequate comfort, and he wants to leave them with something better to hold on to, while he’s downstairs. So, he makes for the only other comfort he can think of: the stupid little black teddy bear. It’ll take seconds. He spots it on the floor, peaking out from the beneath the bed amongst the broken glass, and Lyall turns to face Remus as he plucks it up from where it lies.

He stops, though, when his hand closes tight around the dark fur and he finds that it is already wet. Soaked, in fact.

And when he transfers it into his other hand and takes the first one away, he finds that his hand is wet, too.

It's wet, and it's red. Glistening.

He looks at Hope, and at the bear, and at Hope, and abandons the idea. He drops it back onto the floor, and it's one remaining button eye makes a _clack_ sound against the floorboard. He can still hear Hope murmuring to Remus, _my baby, my boy, it’s okay sweetheart, it’s alright,_ as he’s halfway down the stairs.

Lyall makes for the kitchen, flinging open cabinets in search of what he needs. The metronome ticking of his heart melts into a prayer, of sorts, without meaning to: a monosyllabic chant of _please, fuck, please, fuck, please,_ over and over again while he searches, a prayer to someone or something that he probably doesn’t deserve to be listened to by, something that likely can’t hear him anyway. Perhaps it is a god he doesn’t believe in. Perhaps it is himself. Perhaps it is the moon.

And later, when things are settled (though they’re anything but), and wounds have been treated and potion bottles have been emptied and tea has been made and hands have been washed and the sink has been stained pink, and the boy that is still his son for now is asleep in their bed and there’s a thousand things Lyall needs to be doing, and thinking, and it’s like clutching at water or something thicker trying to focus on anything important except how frightened he is, Lyall finds that the only cohesive thought that forms is something so, so stupid, and yet maybe, right now, it’s the worst of it all.

Are they going to have to throw away the bear?

**Author's Note:**

> and...that's that! i hope you enjoyed it! As always i'm unsure about dis fic so id be really grateful to hear ur thoughts on it! it exists in the same timeline as my other young remus fic, 'the hare and the hound', as im pretty sure that's canon compliant too? Anyway! i tried my best! I hope i did this major canonical event at least some justice, and i hope u enjoyed! thank u!  
> i'm DESPERATE to write something a little cheerier (i say this every time), sirius/remus probably but...writing happy (and 'in love') doesn't seem to come as naturally to me, which probably says something really lovely about my general disposition. if there's something u'd like to see..let me know! i know people probably won't even see this but...it's a mission. for sure. write some happy endings. i'm on it. sort of.  
> -ridi


End file.
